The Second Jungle Book
mud. Purun Bhagat heaped his fire high that night, for he was sure his
brothers would need warmth; but never a beast came to the shrine, though
he called and called till he dropped asleep, wondering what had happened
in the woods.
It was in the black heart of the night, the rain drumming like a
thousand drums, that he was roused by a plucking at his blanket, and,
stretching out, felt the little hand of a langur. “It is better here
than in the trees,” he said sleepily, loosening a fold of blanket; “take
it and be warm.” The monkey caught his hand and pulled hard. “Is it
food, then?” said Purun Bhagat. “Wait awhile, and I will prepare some.”
As he kneeled to throw fuel on the fire the langur ran to the door of
the shrine, crooned and ran back again, plucking at the man’s knee.
“What is it? What is thy trouble, Brother?” said Purun Bhagat, for the
langur’s eyes were full of things that he could not tell. “Unless one of
thy caste be in a trap--and none set traps here--I will not go into that
weather. Look, Brother, even the barasingh comes for shelter!”
The deer’s antlers clashed as he strode into the shrine, clashed against
the grinning statue of Kali. He lowered them in Purun Bhagat’s direction
and stamped uneasily, hissing through his half-shut nostrils.
“Hai! Hai! Hai!” said the Bhagat, snapping his fingers, “Is THIS payment
for a night’s lodging?” But the deer pushed him toward the door, and as
he did so Purun Bhagat heard the sound of something opening with a sigh,
and saw two slabs of the floor draw away from each other, while the
sticky earth below smacked its lips.
“Now I see,” said Purun Bhagat. “No blame to my brothers that they did
not sit by the fire to-night. The mountain is falling. And yet--why
should I go?” His eye fell on the empty begging-bowl, and his face
changed. “They have given me good food daily since--since I came, and,
if I am not swift, to-morrow there will not be one mouth in the valley.
Indeed, I must go and warn them below. Back there, Brother! Let me get
to the fire.”
The barasingh backed unwillingly as Purun Bhagat drove a pine torch deep
into the flame, twirling it till it was well lit. “Ah! ye came to warn
me,” he said, rising. “Better than that we shall do; better than that.
Out, now, and lend me thy neck, Brother, for I have but two feet.”
He clutched the bristling withers of the barasingh with his right hand,
held the torch away with his left, and stepped out of the shrine into
the desperate night. There was no breath of wind, but the rain nearly
drowned the flare as the great deer hurried down the slope, sliding
on his haunches. As soon as they were clear of the forest more of the
Bhagat’s brothers joined them. He heard, though he could not see, the
langurs pressing about him, and behind them the uhh! uhh! of Sona. The
rain matted his long white hair into ropes; the water splashed beneath
his bare feet, and his yellow robe clung to his frail old body, but he
stepped down steadily, leaning against the barasingh. He was no longer
a holy man, but Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E., Prime Minister of no small
State, a man accustomed to command, going out to save life. Down
the steep, plashy path they poured all together, the Bhagat and his
brothers, down and down till the deer’s feet clicked and stumbled on the
wall of a threshing-floor, and he snorted because he smelt Man. Now they
were at the head of the one crooked village street, and the Bhagat beat
with his crutch on the barred windows of the blacksmith’s house, as his
torch blazed up in the shelter of the eaves. “Up and out!” cried Purun
Bhagat; and he did not know his own voice, for it was years since he had
spoken aloud to a man. “The hill falls! The hill is falling! Up and out,
oh, you within!”
“It is our Bhagat,” said the blacksmith’s wife. “He stands among his
beasts. Gather the little ones and give the call.”
It ran from house to house, while the beasts, cramped in the narrow way,
surged and huddled round the Bhagat, and Sona puffed impatiently.
The people hurried into the street--they were no more than seventy souls
all told--and in the glare of the torches they saw their Bhagat holding
back the terrified barasingh, while the monkeys plucked piteously at his
skirts, and Sona sat on his haunches and roared.
“Across the valley and up the next hill!” shouted Purun Bhagat. “Leave
none behind! We follow!”
Then the people ran as only Hill folk can run, for they knew that in a
landslip you must climb for the highest ground across the valley. They
fled, splashing through the little river at the bottom, and panted up
the terraced fields on the far side, while the Bhagat and his brethren
followed. Up and up the opposite mountain they climbed, calling to each
other by name--the roll-call of the village--and at their heels toiled
the big barasingh, weighted by the failing strength of Purun Bhagat.
At last the deer stopped in the shadow of a deep pinewood, five hundred
feet up the hillside. His instinct, that had warned him of the coming
slide, told him he would he safe here.
Purun Bhagat dropped fainting by his side, for the chill of the rain and
that fierce climb were killing him; but first he called to the scattered
torches ahead, “Stay and count your numbers”; then, whispering to the
deer as he saw the lights gather in a cluster: “Stay with me, Brother.
Stay--till--I--go!”
There was a sigh in the air that grew to a mutter, and a mutter that
grew to a roar, and a roar that passed all sense of hearing, and the
hillside on which the villagers stood was hit in the darkness, and
rocked to the blow. Then a note as steady, deep, and true as the deep C
of the organ drowned everything for perhaps five minutes, while the very
roots of the pines quivered to it. It died away, and the sound of the
rain falling on miles of hard ground and grass changed to the muffled
drum of water on soft earth. That told its own tale.
Never a villager--not even the priest--was bold enough to speak to the
Bhagat who had saved their lives. They crouched under the pines and
waited till the day. When it came they looked across the valley and
saw that what had been forest, and terraced field, and track-threaded
grazing-ground was one raw, red, fan-shaped smear, with a few trees
flung head-down on the scarp. That red ran high up the hill of their
refuge, damming back the little river, which had begun to spread into a
brick-coloured lake. Of the village, of the road to the shrine, of the
shrine itself, and the forest behind, there was no trace. For one mile
in width and two thousand feet in sheer depth the mountain-side had come
away bodily, planed clean from head to heel.
And the villagers, one by one, crept through the wood to pray before
their Bhagat. They saw the barasingh standing over him, who fled when
they came near, and they heard the langurs wailing in the branches,
and Sona moaning up the hill; but their Bhagat was dead, sitting
cross-legged, his back against a tree, his crutch under his armpit, and
his face turned to the north-east.
The priest said: “Behold a miracle after a miracle, for in this very
attitude must all Sunnyasis be buried! Therefore where he now is we will
build the temple to our holy man.”
They built the temple before a year was ended--a little stone-and-earth
shrine--and they called the hill the Bhagat’s hill, and they worship
there with lights and flowers and offerings to this day. But they do
not know that the saint of their worship is the late Sir Purun Dass,
K.C.I.E., D.C.L., Ph.D., etc., once Prime Minister of the progressive
and enlightened State of Mohiniwala, and honorary or corresponding
member of more learned and scientific societies than will ever do any
good in this world or the next.
A SONG OF KABIR
Oh, light was the world that he weighed in his hands!
Oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and his lands!
He has gone from the guddee and put on the shroud,
And departed in guise of bairagi avowed!
Now the white road to Delhi is mat for his feet,
The sal and the kikar must guard him from heat;
His home is the camp, and the waste, and the crowd--
He is seeking the Way as bairagi avowed!
He has looked upon Man, and his eyeballs are clear
(There was One; there is One, and but One, saith Kabir);
The Red Mist of Doing has thinned to a cloud--
He has taken the Path for bairagi avowed!
To learn and discern of his brother the clod,
Of his brother the brute, and his brother the God.
He has gone from the council and put on the shroud
(“Can ye hear?” saith Kabir), a bairagi avowed!
LETTING IN THE JUNGLE
Veil them, cover them, wall them round--
Blossom, and creeper, and weed--
Let us forget the sight and the sound,
The smell and the touch of the breed!
Fat black ash by the altar-stone,
Here is the white-foot rain,
And the does bring forth in the fields unsown,
And none shall affright them again;
And the blind walls crumble, unknown, o’erthrown
And none shall inhabit again!
You will remember that after Mowgli had pinned Shere Khan’s hide to
the Council Rock, he told as many as were left of the Seeonee Pack that
henceforward he would hunt in the Jungle alone; and the four children of
Mother and Father Wolf said that they would hunt with him. But it is not
easy to change one’s life all in a minute--particularly in the Jungle.
The first thing Mowgli did, when the disorderly Pack had slunk off, was
to go to the home-cave, and sleep for a day and a night. Then he told
Mother Wolf and Father Wolf as much as they could understand of his
adventures among men; and when he made the morning sun flicker up and
down the blade of his skinning-knife,--the same he had skinned Shere
Khan with,--they said he had learned something. Then Akela and Gray
Brother had to explain their share of the great buffalo-drive in the
ravine, and Baloo toiled up the hill to hear all about it, and Bagheera
scratched himself all over with pure delight at the way in which Mowgli
had managed his war.
It was long after sunrise, but no one dreamed of going to sleep, and
from time to time, during the talk, Mother Wolf would throw up her head,
and sniff a deep snuff of satisfaction as the wind brought her the smell
of the tiger-skin on the Council Rock.
“But for Akela and Gray Brother here,” Mowgli said, at the end, “I could
have done nothing. Oh, mother, mother! if thou hadst seen the black
herd-bulls pour down the ravine, or hurry through the gates when the
Man-Pack flung stones at me!”
“I am glad I did not see that last,” said Mother Wolf stiffly. “It is
not MY custom to suffer my cubs to be driven to and fro like jackals.
_I_ would have taken a price from the Man-Pack; but I would have spared
the woman who gave thee the milk. Yes, I would have spared her alone.”
“Peace, peace, Raksha!” said Father Wolf, lazily. “Our Frog has come
back again--so wise that his own father must lick his feet; and what is
a cut, more or less, on the head? Leave Men alone.” Baloo and Bagheera
both echoed: “Leave Men alone.”
Mowgli, his head on Mother Wolf’s side, smiled contentedly, and said
that, for his own part, he never wished to see, or hear, or smell Man
again.
“But what,” said Akela, cocking one ear--“but what if men do not leave
thee alone, Little Brother?”
“We be FIVE,” said Gray Brother, looking round at the company, and
snapping his jaws on the last word.
“We also might attend to that hunting,” said Bagheera, with a little
switch-switch of his tail, looking at Baloo. “But why think of men now,
Akela?”
“For this reason,” the Lone Wolf answered: “when that yellow chief’s
hide was hung up on the rock, I went back along our trail to the